Last week, just as a bunch of excited gamers were unwrapping their new Xboxes and PlayStations, the networks for both consoles went offline, and a group called the Lizard Squad took credit. Shortly thereafter, two young men went on the radio claiming to be behind it.

The two alleged hackers went on the BBC identified only as "Member 1" and "Member 2," and explained the motives behind the hacks. Their supposed beef? Sony and Microsoft left themselves wide open, so the hackers were doing the world a big favour by exposing the vulnerabilities in the huge systems. You want to play your console on Christmas? Too bad!

Krebs reports that both of the guys, Vinnie Omari and Julius Kivimäki, had previously been on TV talking about security. He further links Omari and Kivimäki to other hacker related incidents and forum postings.

There are, of course, plenty of red flags and caveats here. Why would hackers who perpetrated a massive crime want to expose themselves to potential prosecution by revealing themselves in any way? Then again, if you're an arsehole hacker who's screwing things up for people, maybe you're arrogant enough to do something like this, too.

To be fair, Krebs also notes that his evidence is inconclusive, and that these could very well be posers. What we do know, though, is that these two are asking for it, whether they're behind the PSN and Xbox Live attacks or not. [Brian Krebs via SAI]